"Uniforms of the AWI ??" Topic

While doing some web searching on the AWI. I came across this page selling these CD's. Not having heard anyone talk about the uniform templates before. I wondered if anyone has any of these and if they are accurate??
Thanky

link

Never saw this before. Looks interesting.

Why not have a look at his website? He has a lot more there.
reeseartofwars.com

Paul

Emperor's
I haven't seen those either! Didn't realize there were companies making such things.

The artwork's ok, and you get rear views (which are often hard to find), but plate captions like this worry me as to the quality of the research:

The US 8th Continental Regiment – fought in the siege of Boston, Lake Champlain, Trenton, Princeton, Saratoga, Monmouth and Yorktown

The "8th Continental Regiment" only existed in 1776; the later battles were fought by the 2nd New Hampshire regiment, which was largely formed from the 8th Continental. Similarly, the "6th Continental Regiment" is accredited with the battle honours of the 2nd Massachusetts Regiment post-1776.

The 3rd Foot Guards plate has a number of errors, but I don't know how typical this is of the British plates:
- buttonhole lace was scallop-headed, not pointed (prior to 1775 it was pointed, but was only in pairs – the distinction between the 2nd and 3rd regiments was the shape of the lace, not the number/arrangement)
- drummers had white coats faced blue, and red waistcoats; fur caps were white with brass plates for all companies.
- grenadiers wore caps with white metal plates and they had blue wings on their coats (officers' cap plates were black with gilt relief; those of sergeants were brass).
- (not included in the plate) sergeants' sashes had a white-over-blue central stripe.

As he has bearskins for Royal Roussillon in bearskins in F&IW it is obviously all fantasy

Seems to me bearskins for Fr. regiments in New France would be dead easy. Lot's of furs around. That's what they were in new France to protect,…the fur trade!

Hehehhehe new that you could not resist that one spontoon ….waiting now for history gamer?

FWIW the general info on these looks OK but there are many other sources around, many peoples favorite
link
and
link
not to mention
link
or even
link

Which link are you making reference to? The link I posted or the link Emperor posted? or both? lol

Honestly for my figs, I'm ok with being generally close. How ever I like my sources to be as spot on as possible. So with that said, even though I like the looks of the links above. If the source is off by as much as SuperMax has posted. I would not spend money to purchase said source. Just my two cents.

The one Emperors Library posted

PS Super Max is generally on the money

For some reason the Doodles seem to favor spontoons. There is a reference from Joseph Plum Martin to an officer with a pole and bayonet afixed to it. Not very useful, but, oh well…

The Brits sensibly ditched theirs in favor of fusils.

historygamer,
Didn't congress want to arm regiments with spears / poles with bayonets to save money from buying muskets?? lol

also recall reading when some Penn units were threatening to mutiny. A Captain with a spontoon was threatening to run through one of the ring leaders and another shot and killed the captain??

SuperMax, what do you think about Tim Reese's authoritative CD of "Uniforms of the American Revolution? If you don't want to post in public I understand. But don't want to spend money on a product unless its accurate. thanky

Fusils for fighting the enemy , spontoons for parades and keeping the wife inline

Washington issued an order requiring captains and above, who were serving on foot, to have spontoons instead of fusils as it kept them focussed on their command duties and not having to worry about re-loading. At both Bunker Hill and White Plains, British attacks came to a halt when a subaltern fired at the enemy and his men followed suit and couldn't be galvanised into moving forward again.

It was the riflemen that Washington considdered arming with pikes (as well as, not instead of) to give them some personal protection whilst they were re-loading, because of the extra time it took with a rifled weapon.

@ ironwolf,

I'm reluctant to condemn something I don't own and haven't had a chance to look through in detail. The guy seems to be a graphic artist, rather than a specialist uniform/AWI buff, so I would expect a few errors on some of the more obscure stuff (eg 3rd Foot Guards drummers – I should also point out that the 3rd Guards didn't really look like that in North America anyway, nor did the 1st and 2nd).

If all you require the CDs for is inspiration for uniform/colour combos for the Continentals/Militia, and a basic coverage of British, French and German regulars, I suspect they are ok. They do seem to be very much based on the plates in Mollo/McGregor, although unlike the Kiley/Smith "encyclopaedia" he does seem to have attempted to expand on the individual units to give a more complete picture of any one regiment's uniforms.

If you want to be 100% authentic – in as far as we can be on certain units – then Mollo, Lefferts, Strachan, Franklin to some extent, and the Uniformology series (which I think are now all in booklet form) are still the best starting points. Most of the Company of Military Historians plates are still ok, but even one or two of those have now been superceded by newly uncovered information, or re-interpretation of old sources (for example, Strachan's book on 1768-1796 British uniforms uses only a fraction of the material he actually gathered).

I have the discs and they are a very good source for illustrations of the uniforms with front, back and close up views. How accurate the information is….. may be another story.
For me the are just another pirce of the puzzle that are AWI uniforms. I look at all info available (Mollo, Osprey, etc) and go with what makes the most sense to me.

Cheap enough and good for the facing colors.

SuperMax,
thanks for the input, since my AWI is in 15mm the finer details are not needed. Plus I just like looking at all the kewl uniforms. I have Mollo's book, the Osprey's from that Brendan fellow (wink) and Uniforms of the Revolutionary war. I'm following more in Nevinsrip's footsteps than any hard core research.

But if a source is way off or just made up, I'd rather avoid them. Your comment on how the Guards looked in North America compared to the CD's version makes me want to know the details on that?!?!?!

P.S. thanks for the clarification on riflemen & the pikes.

The Foot Guards modified their uniforms considerably before heading across the Atlantic – details are here:-

link

Tim Reese's 3rd Foot Guards would be home service uniforms, or possibly very late war.